I think I love this saying more than the average person. Maybe it’s because I’ve spent the majority of my life working with kids. Maybe it’s because I’ve had great students. Or maybe it’s because 50% of my community worldwide are kids. Or maybe it’s really because I know this sentence is so full of hard, beautiful truth.

I just got back from a Thanksgiving silent meditation retreat at the Bhavana Society Monastery in West Virginia. There’s still so much to process and I haven’t finished reflecting, but I did want to share this one story from a dhamma talk I heard this past weekend. It struck me as a useful and timely reminder that fighting hate with more hate or responding to unskillful thinking with more unskillful thinking doesn’t resolve much of anything.